ORLANDO MAGIC SEASON PREVIEW

Their stars (Dwight Howard and Ryan Anderson) have been traded, leaving a team behind that is unrecognizable to its most loyal fans.

Players know they are part of a rebuilding plan . . . a relaunch that they, ultimately, might not be part of down the road.

Sounds eerily familiar to another period in Magic history.

Like this season's club, the 1999-2000 team couldn't dwell on the past or depend on the future.

It had to live and play in the now, in the moment.

The players defied the doom's day odds during a season in which they were expected to bottom out and follow a blueprint designed to acquire real stars.

Four years after the Magic's 1995 NBA Finals team finally had been dismantled — Shaq, Penny, Nick, 3-D and Horace all gone — the 1999-2000 club showed the league how far a little talent and a whole lot of moxie can take you during an interlude.

They refused to back down or accept their fate. Pride, passion and perseverance weren't just throwaway clichés to them. They chased loose balls with relentless fury, outworking opponents while collecting floor burns and league-wide respect.

The Magic finished 41-41 and one game out of the No. 8 playoff spot.

Heart & Hustle wasn't just a catchy slogan.

"It's who we were," said Doc Rivers, who coached the 1999-200 Magic team. "They didn't have a 'quit' button."

Bo Outlaw, a tireless forward on that team, is 41 now, beginning his fifth season as the Magic's community ambassador. He still remains an ambassador for Heart & Hustle.

He still can be seen at Magic practices, running down missed freethrows. He encourages youngsters and is ready to step on the floor if the club is short players because of injury during workouts.

"We had good players on that [1999-2000] team, but no all-stars," Outlaw said. "We had guys who knew how to play the game. We knew we had to bring it every night, diving for loose balls or diving into the bleachers.

"This team is better than we were, but they can bring it every night, too. "

Like Bo, the Heart & Hustle crew was full of longshots.

Rivers was in his first year as a coach, the former NBA point guard hired out of the broadcast booth to replace Hall of Famer Chuck Daly.

The Magic were under construction and trying to shed salary to have a crack at acquiring free-agent stars the following summer.

"You knew the plan was for the future, planning for cap space," said Garrity, now working with a hedge-fund group in Connecticut. "Being so young was a benefit. You were just fighting for your career, anyway, so it didn't matter."

On his way to eventually signing Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, then-general manager John Gabriel had made more deals than Donald Trump. Over a year and a half, he and capologist Scott Herring swung 57 transactions in a whirlwind of moves.

"The great part of Heart and Hustle was that all people talked about was next year, about getting Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill," Rivers said. "Our guys had every reason to say, 'Who cares?' but they never took that excuse. It was the best part of that team."

Gabriel, now director of scouting for the New York Knicks, remembers being surprised at the team's success.

"We sort of didn't know what we had," said Gabriel, who was named NBA executive of the year. "We wound up with players who were better than we thought they were. Night in and night out, we had a chance."

Gabriel credits Rivers for driving the team of underdogs. Doc admits that before the season, he read to the players the negative remarks written about them.

"I remember reading that to those guys and they ate it up," said Rivers, who was named coach of the year. "They turned it all into energy."

And it didn't hurt that most of the players were in the final years of their contracts, a supreme motivating force. Wallace played most of the season with a fractured foot.

"Let's just say there were not many tardy slips for practice," Gabriel laughed.

No player epitomized Heart & Hustle more than Armstrong, an undrafted point guard out of tiny Fayetteville State. While trying to impress scouts playing in minor-league outposts, Armstrong worked at a mill, cooking and dyeing yarn.

Gabriel gave him the break he needed. Armstrong was named the NBA's most improved player and sixth man of the year in 1998-1999. He became a fan favorite during his nine-year Magic career.